there was an echo far and faint
by st.concertina
Summary: She's got certain rules when it comes to Naruto — Or; After the war, Sakura grows up.
1. Chapter 1

**entitled:** there was an echo far and faint.  
 **fandom:** naruto, narusaku, some minor sasusaku in so far as dealing with it. team seven working its shit out maybe. also sai and yamato are a part of team seven too, ima fight anyone who says otherwise.  
 **setting:** after the war sakura tried to navigate sasuke being back and the complicated shift of team dynamics, and also naruto. always naruto.  
 **warnings:** alternate end to the war, sasuke and sakura are a complex situation that shocking doesn't take just three sentences to resolve. there is a lot of hurt and guilt and sakura coming to terms with a lot of the shit she did wrong, and a lot that she didn't. sakura is a teenage girl, she deserves to sort through her feelings. learning to forgive herself maybe? trying to come to terms with her feelings for naruto? this is firmly a narusaku fic FYI and it's gonna get worse with these two before it gets better. there's gonna be a lot of angst. it's generally a coming of age sakura fic. the romance is hopefully real and also painful.  
 **disclaimer:** i own nothing that isn't already mine  
 **notes:** you guys probably came here after reading (or because of!)'twist, snap' i'm honoured, but this is quite a different fic in tone and intentions! this is the anti-twist-snap fic in a universe where things didn't go disastrously wrong. sakura is a lot less of a cocky bitter asshole here, here she's younger and softer and the cannon ending happened in an alternate universe that i've mentally set on fire. here it's an 'after the war' fic that's a little more bittersweet, with the sweet set to outweight the bitter (i promise!) and i hope a lot more subtler too. a fic where sakura tries and fails and figures somethings out, because i wanted to give her the chance that we missed out on cannon. there's gonna be some jealousy, some slow burn, some long overdue realisations and revelations. in this universe, sakura is coming to terms with a lot of things, like most of us did growing up, like some of us still are. so as much as there's gonna be some funny moments here and there, this isn't a comedic angst fic the way 'twist, snap' was - this is a pining, omgithinkiminlovewithnaruto?! fic. idk if you like it, i needed to write it. also i'm still writing twist, snap - i'm writing this too. so yall please don't nag me for updates on the other fic. it's just not gonna be fun for any of us if you do that. (also rating may change but don't get ur hopes up yall filthy but WE'LL SEE)  
 **note:** reminder to keep an open mind in order to enjoy this. i rage-write but i also evidently hurt-write. I HAVE NOT BETAD BECAUSE THE PAPPARAZI SAY I AM DIFFICULT TO WORK WITH.

* * *

—

* * *

If it ever comes down to a choice, it's simple. And it will come down to a choice – this is what the battlefield is, choosing which way to whip the knife, tactical, intuitive. You know this, and it is so _easy_ , if you have to choose between them…If you need to save one of them, if you've got a thumbfull of chakra and two boys you absolutely, most certainly _cannot_ split yourself between, and not for lack of trying because you have tried and you have _tried_ – and Sakura, it will _never_ end – and it _will_ come down to a choice.

You're going to choose Naruto.

It's not for loving Sasuke any less, love has no place in war, you want it to, you wish it could stop wars, end them – but love or not, you're going to save Naruto. You've made this decision before, later than you should. In the Land of Iron. You chose Naruto. Love has no place in war.

If anyone can save Sasuke, and you so doubt that saving – it's Naruto.

And Naruto would die for Sasuke, without asking, without thinking, a thousand times.

And you're going to be there and you're going to get everything. Shoddy ductile repair, oil the gears, find the leaks, unstop his heart, you're going to make sure he doesn't. He can't. You can't do much, but this you will not allow.

And it isn't love, Sakura.

Love has no place in war.

* * *

—

* * *

After the war, they go home.

Sounds a bit strange, right? It is, it's stranger still to walk through the red gates again, ash clinging to her eyelashes and her mouth chalk dry. The first thing to hit her tongue was blood and then it was sake. She saw her teammates pulled through the crowd, the hard jangle of limbs around her, everywhere she looked was noisy colour – jostling, jostling, she was drunk on exhaustion and could offer everyone else nothing more than a sleepy, addled smile. Tears and laughter everywhere, so much noise. She felt like she was still floating.

There're soldier's congratulations, music and funeral parties, celebrating the valiant dead. All through the night. Konoha floating in a myriad of lights and stars, lit up with the open bars, the rowdy halls, the streets warm and glowing, like a city floating in the night sky. She is alive, she is home where so many couldn't be.

She releases Naruto to the crowd, to the open arms, relinquishes Sasuke to a grim crowd of battered ANBU, to the noise. They won't harm him, she's sure. He's Naruto's the way Naruto is theirs. Divine will tried to come between the two a day ago and not even that could tear them apart. Sakura isn't worried, Naruto's there. Naruto presses towards the enforcers with a grim smile, and really, he's got that on lock. She trusts him. Sakura wants to go home, to her parents, to a bed, to wash her hair. Sakura wishes trusting Naruto is enough.

They can bask in the hero's welcome, National Treasures. She watches them go with a sad, contented smile. Let him enjoy home. She's in the sort of strange mood that might get in the way of everything.

After the war, they go home.

They try to forget the war, death. Sakura tries just as hard as anyone else, but it's difficult. She doesn't get to go home, to her parents, to a bed, to wash her hair. She rolls up the sleeves of a smoke-stained lab coat and wades into a medical tent, and for five hours she pushes guts back into a Grass Nin's stomach, pulls a slashed throat together, coaxes a crumpled lung back into shape. She can't bear the festivities.

By the time she goes home she's got blood dried beneath her nails, Ino steps into line with her with the shadows under her eyes bruise-blue, sighing. "Fuck. My nailbeds will never recover."

Ino felt precisely eight people give beneath her hands and Sakura can't even keep count.

The blonde's face cracks in a huge, inelegant yawn, her shoulder droops against Sakura's as they walk the amber alleys alone. Konoha's more or less destroyed, but people have managed to open shacks with soldier's brew.

Sakura's eyelids droop. She wonders where Naruto is, if he's okay. She'd barely seen him.

"I wanna get drunk," Ino whines, snuggling warmly into Sakura's shoulder. The tip of her nose is red and cold. She glares wistful as a shadow of an Iwa nin stumbles through the doors of one inn and crumples against a heap of garbage cans. "But I'm so _tired._ "

Sakura hmms, tired too, even to tease. The rest of Ino is warm, a soothing presence. It helps.

"I should be having post-war sex."

If Sakura had enough blood left in her body she might have bothered blushing. "Yeah?" She scoffs, but it ends up with her jaw aching around an ugly, exhausted yawn of her own. The kind that makes the back of your eyes ache. "Like your parents would let you."

"Hm? Dad's dead. So I guess I'll only have to deal with Mom."

Sakura stops. She'd forgotten. "I'm sorry, Ino."

Her best-friend shrugs, "It's fine."

Sakura can't move, stiff and still. She stands for a while, pale with humiliation at her own insensitivity. Ino simply grabs her arm and throws it over her shoulder, her hip bumps them along and she grins so valiantly anyone else would buy it, dragging her feet like she's Sakura's drunk baggage. Because they should be drunk, really. They deserve to get drunk and just laugh the war off, to get some breathing room before the break of the day, before the harsh rise of the sun, the morning pulling everything into reality – some time to cope.

They make it mutely to the corner of Sakura's street. The smell of antiseptic clings to Ino's hair, stings her nose in a chemical burn that they should really be used to by now. Ino stops musingly after the sound of loud laughter pierces the coming morning like a lance through the air, not quite out of earshot, too jubilant. Thoughtless.

Konoha's dawn looms above them like an awkward skin, too loose on their bodies. They are blood drenched and war weary, and Sakura wishes she could get drunk, wishes she could numb it away, but it feels like the past four years have eaten something of her, gobbled it down, and she wonders if the word home will ever fit right again. If Ino can move through the spaces her father will never again occupy, if the Yamanaka flowershop still stands – if maybe one day they can rebuild this place and it won't stoop beneath the ghosts of what it once was, who they once were.

She's scared. Along the way she wasted so much time not appreciating her parents enough, not even Konoha, even with its saving she'd entrusted it squarely to Naruto – just like she had with Sasuke-kun.

All that's left is damage control and that Sakura can do to some extent.

"You should be having post-war sex too. About time you stop being such a goddamn prude." Ino declares loftily, falling easily into taunting.

When Sakura doesn't rise to the bait, Ino sighs and squints at the amber fringing the horizon, a sun about to rise.

"…Guess we missed the party, Forehead."

* * *

—

* * *

She's got certain rules when it comes to Naruto.

Or, Sakura tries to make some up because it's apparent she needs them.

After the war nothing is ever the same, though to be fair the 'same' that they'd been going for was three years gone. She thought what Naruto did not say; that bringing Sasuke back might be the easy part.

That maybe it wasn't going to be as simple as slotting him back into the place, like a puzzle piece they'd lost beneath the couch suddenly resurfacing – like Sasuke could just _be_ there suddenly, could be put back in Konoha like he'd never left.

The Sasuke-shaped hole they'd left in both their lives was for a twelve-year old boy she'd loved enough to make her forget herself. Someone arrogant, someone a little more sentimental, wrath and hubris, but ultimately more known to her than Sasuke was now.

But Naruto _believes_ , and if the strength of his convictions can challenge the very rotation of the earth then…well, Sakura will always believe Naruto. Sakura follows suit.

As it turns out she doesn't have enough time to worry about fitting Sasuke back, to plan before-hand how to sort out a team whose parameters have shifted, to _reaccomodate_ Sasuke. Sakura is gratefully sucked up into the reconstruction process, stuck in the grind of a city rebuilding itself, her social life is found in the bare seconds she gets between shifts to and away from the Hokage Tower, elbow deep at the hospital – work whose days are spent in constant revolution with Sai and Ino, and sometimes she even suffers Kakashi's occasional concern after long periods of casual negligence.

The routine is a swarm of organized chaos, it makes her feel useful. The work she does is of no small importance and sometimes it is like wading through wave after jumbling wave of genin, ANBU and antiseptic – it is exhaustingly monotonous clean-up duty. Ino says that something's probably gonna crack behind that billboard brow before she stops, and Sakura doesn't say that it might _if she does._

Her time cut in phases that have the numb chaos of the workplace – reconstruction plans with Shikamaru, officiating at the hospital, herding interns into some semblance of order, and attending to Tsunade's missives.

When Sakura isn't dealing with ( _Tsunade's_ ) paperwork that she swears is _breeding_ on her desk every time she turns away from it, Sakura spars. With Sai or Yamato sometimes. She works her body through grueling exercises, limbs that will never forget the war swinging through motions with the well-honed arch of a thirsty kunai. There have been weaknesses in her techniques that she is determined to iron out. She sweats like a beast, looks like one too, but she's going to be useful.

The first time she tries towards reintegrating Sasuke it's mostly an accident. She'd been coming back from the the tower, her belly whining for sustenance – she'd planned for a dango stick to keep the beast quiet and instead spotted a head of golden hair.

It was Naruto in the Yamanaka's.

She hesitated longer than she should have, the glass between them seemed almost to be floating. He had his back to her, it wasn't very often she saw him in civilian wear. _He looks good_ , the thought came unbidden, natural and utterly not at all.

Naruto is good looking and she can recognize that objectively, she _can_. He's tall, even with shoulders slightly hunched in his scrutiny over the assorted pots. Sakura hovers, unsure. Naruto in a flowershop.

Should she greet him? Gone are the days where she didn't have to think about it. Sakura catches her eyes in the reflection, an uncertain green.

Would her presence be an interference or not? Some small, tiny part of herself is insidiously winding itself around her elbow, wants to tug her away, tells her keep walking, _this will never be your business._

Naruto's buying flowers. And that tips the bridge over, and a lot of other questions fall into the water with a resounding splash – for who? Why?

Sakura turns away sharply, starts walking. Fast. It's a natural response, running away. Like, she's preemptively avoiding rejection – rejection from _what?_ She doesn't _want_ anything – what the actual fuck. Naruto's buying _flowers_ , she doesn't want to see for who. She just knows it isn't her.

It's selfish, she knows that. It's…

"Sakura-chan?"

She turns, startled. He's hanging from behind the door and when he catches her eye, he grins wide. The inexplicable knot behind her ribs tightens and she forces up a smile, tilting her head, she hopes its faintness can be credited to her surprise or _something._

"Hey, Naruto. Long time no see."

It's true. They haven't really seen each other around ever since he'd left the hospital, and she only half-convinces herself to chalk that up to her being busy. Naruto's been busy too. Running around between the council meetings and Sasuke's disciplinary meetings. Under other circumstances she'd be relieved to see him, even happy. But the knot behind her ribs twists and grows, and she's at a loss for what to do. She feels awkward, like she's interrupted him.

And she can't help it, really. Because she's the biggest dumbass in the world, "What're you doing?"

Maybe she'd rather get it delivered to her straight than die from the suspense, or drive herself to distraction with what his purpose for being in a flowershop possibly could be.

She waits tensely for the unnerving truth.

He laughs sheepish, scratching his chin. "I'm looking around for a gift."

Sakura's lips tighten, the glimpse of teeth in her false smile. Unbearably jovial, she asks. "Oh? Anything in particular?"

He looks uncomfortable and Sakura's tummy drops. Her body feels leaden, foreign to her, but she's always going to be stupid, isn't she? She's always going to lunge headfirst into the situations that are most unbearable. Fake it till you make it, right. "Let me help you."

"Uh..." Naruto chews at the inside of his mouth.

Sakura feels the mortified flush of anguish, that she's placed herself directly in a situation where she is not entirely welcome. She steels herself, stops her fingers from curling tensely around her elbows and smiles again. "Well," Sakura says through her grin, makes up the slight edge of annoyed tolerance. "If you don't need my help just say so. Ino should be in to have helped you already."

"Sakura-chaaaan," Naruto moans, sulky. "What would Ino know about it? Come on. Come help me."

Sakura does. She follows him into the shop with a foggy head and her blood slugging in lurches through her veins. Ino meets her eyes, rolls her own, and flips a page in her book, content to let Naruto be Sakura's Problem.

Sakura follows Naruto past roses, past lilacs and ostentatiously bright bouquets and doesn't realize that Naruto's brought her there to stare at a couple of pots until two minutes of her own uncomprehending, muddled silence.

"...so which one?"

Naruto's frowning at the tiny potted plants with the riddled concentration of a man reviewing battleplans.

Sakura blinks. "What."

"I want to get a house-warming gift for the bastard." He gingerly picks up a cactus, with a carefulness she hasn't ever seen in him. Naruto's always gone grabbing at things, he is either lunging or getting ready to do so, all the time. Sakura's ribs close a little tighter, and then loosen their claustraphobic choke on her lungs. "What do you think, Sakura-chan?"

She hasn't seen Sasuke since...? It's been more than a month. Naruto isn't buying flowers and the relief she feels is too great to properly name, too dangerous to give it a name. The relief is quickly drowned beneath a flood of anxiety. Sasuke-kun.

"Yeah," Naruto goes on. "He's moving into the old compound, now that he's out of custody."

Sakura picks up a small potted bamboo, anything to turn away from Naruto. To hide her thoughts from him. She traces the gold ribbon holding the bunch together with the edge of her pinky.

"Sakura-chan?"

"I think this'll do," Sakura answers him, the soft concern in his voice pitching her reaction. She smiles up at him, "Though a cactus is the safest option just in case he's like Kakashi-sensei and he can't be bothered to water any of his plants."

"Mr. Ukke?"

"Yeah, like Mr. Ukke," Sakura agrees with a involuntary giggle. She stops, feels a smile pulling at her mouth again. Sasuke-kun is an uncomfortable topic...but Naruto always found ways to coax her good mood up. It faded a little, "But bamboo is more traditional. Maybe Sasuke-kun will water it?"

"He better," Naruto grouses, mouth set. "Come on."

* * *

—

* * *

Tsunade said something strange to her once. Her skin red like a fever, the cool edge of a sake cup cradled against shiny temples - and murmuring in stupor.

Sakura had been shuffling the paperwork on the desk, trying to sort them. The night was one of those monsoon ones, sticky with the suckle and spit of mosquitoes. A parched scatter of air in between seething humidity.

Tsunade had said, with the cool lip of her cup between her brows, her shoulders a shamble. A regretful drunk, "Sakura," she had said, "Listen close."

Sakura watched her master. The Fifth was looking out the window to the black night and paying attention to nothing else. There was an orchestra, noisy, crickets - as if mutinous at the lack of movement from the trees, the stifling still.

"Two men are drowning. How do you make it three?"

"...Shishou?"

"It's a riddle, Sakura." Tsunade had said, and then sighed. The sort of sigh that comes deep beneath the diaphragm, glows between the third and the fourth rib and comes out like a cloud of ash. There is a fire in the Fifth's heart, that is eating away at itself, is choking, is feeding, is dying. A gnaw with a hole in its belly. The sort of gnaw that never goes away.

Sakura was good at riddles. She did not want to know the answer. Two men. She, the third.

Sakura had put the papers into her satchel. Then, after a beat of consideration, withdrew the sake bottle Shizune had hidden behind the cabinet. She felt a soft, painful thing too close to pity to be entertained as she decided to unstop the bottle and fill her master's cup again, all with the tender silence of a geisha. The sort of silence that asks nothing.

Tsunade does not ask her riddle again. Sakura does not guess at the answer.

She leaves the room then, to Tsunade and her cups, and all her drowned dead.

* * *

—

* * *

Sasuke-kun doesn't seem like he's going to answer the door, or gates, or whatever.

Naruto's rowdy enough to wake the dead, thumping his fist on the paint chipped wood. Sakura senses the quick flitter of ANBU over the spines of neighboring rooftops and tries not to nervously tap at the sides of her weapons pouch. She hasn't seen Sasuke since a short glimpse of him in the corridors of the Hokage Tower as he was being 'escorted' to the council room that served for judicial matters.

Sakura had seen him and he hadn't looked her way. He'd been surrounded by a throng of ANBU, none so much daring to touch him. The insides of his wrists were painted in seals but he'd walked through those corridors like he'd owned them.

Sakura had waited for the party to pass before she continued on towards Tsunade's office. She'd sighed, relieved, that she hadn't intervened, hadn't had to greet him. She hadn't been ready then, and Sakura realizes acutely that she isn't ready now.

Something about Sasuke jumbles up her insides. The war. The past three years. They had rattled something in her hard enough that Sakura didn't think she could be _un_ rattled. Around Sasuke - the _though_ t of Sasuke - all those edges felt more apparent.

Around Sasuke-kun, Sakura feels like a mess. Badly assembled caricature of the girl she used to be, the girl she is so afraid that she might still be, and the girl the war churned out. Sakura tries not to shift too much, for Naruto's benefit, at the very least for hers too.

Naruto and her hadn't spoken on the way to the compound. Sakura had not bought a house warming gift - she'd quietly decided not to and Naruto didn't bring it up so she didn't think he'd noticed?

Sakura didn't know what to do about Sasuke-kun and to pretend at Naruto's thoughtless, reflexive joy and warmth would feel like the most transparent self-hating deceit possible. She didn't buy Sasuke a gift not because she didn't think Sasuke would care (he wouldn't), or because she hated him (wariness is the dominant response), but because Sakura was learning tenuously to hold her own dignity.

Sakura would not be a hypocrite here. Naruto comes with gifts because loving Sasuke asks no questions, Sakura comes empty armed because Sasuke is a siren ringing, shaking her up, unsettling and driving panic into every corner of her.

She doesn't want to see Sasuke. Not yet. Band-aids though. And she can at least, you know, not spit in the face of Naruto's struggles by acting like a PTSD victim in Sasuke-kun's presence.

Sakura locks her fingers behind her back so Naruto doesn't see her fidget, or how they shake, just a little.

The gates open. Sakura's arms ache with the muscle memory, she tells herself. _I've been training, I've been working hard. I have grown_. She struggles to remind herself of the shower-fall of splinters, of her palms torn beneath the gravelly burst of earth. I work hard. I am something. The village she is helping rebuild, the parts of herself that she is still reassembling. Nails in her throat, the crush of her ribs, the stop of her heart. A dizzying reel of death. Naruto and Sasuke-kun in the play ground, more than just hurled fists and childish brawling. A very real fear. A closed room, a dark room. Black bruises on her throat.

The poisoned sheen of her drawn kunai. A failed endeavor in the snow. Shame closely following guilt. _Failure_.

Sasuke jerks the gate just wide enough to allow them to see his scowl but not to enter. His eyes narrow as if he has emerged from the darkest room and he begrudges the sun for daring to shine. Bedraggled hair and blotchy blue shadows beneath his eyes, muttering. "Get lost, dobe."

Predictably, Naruto flushes in anger. Sasuke's mismatched eyes slip to Sakura like he only realizes now that she is there. His expression does not even change.

Sakura notes the eyebags with a pang of concern she automatically pins as medical and professional. Sasuke looks thinner somehow, the collar of his shirt is gaping. A blue shirt like the ones he used to wear when they were twelve; except bigger. She realizes with some pain that the shirt might very well belong to Itachi.

 _I should tell him to eat, I should check on him, I should_ \- No. Sakura crushes that line of thought. Tsunade had tactfully assigned Sasuke older medics on the grounds that Sakura was busier with more pressing things like the rebuilding - and Sakura had felt irritated and relieved all at the same time, that the decision had been made for her. _I'm not twelve anymore._

Sakura's heart hammers behind her ribs. She does not smile. "Hello, Sasuke-kun." She says as evenly as she can. "Naruto's brought a gift."

"You godamned bastard," Naruto growls, raising the pot as if he means to hurl it at Sasuke's head. "Look."

Sasuke doesn't acknowledge her, only sliding his eyes back to Naruto again. Sakura feels anger then, and then shame, and then anger again - mostly she should be relieved Sasuke-kun doesn't care to speak to her beyond necessity, she should be _relieved_ that he hasn't changed in his utter indifference towards her, that nothing has forced her to pretend more than civility.

Then she's angry too, because the both of them almost died, he could bear to be nicer - or the very least treat her like a human being if not a teammate. Sasuke-kun is so _rude_. After everything he did. His indifference still cuts. She's angry that it still cuts her too. Angry at herself. And angry that she doesn't get angry with him, that she doesn't acquaint his nose with her fist. Hitting Sasuke-kun is about as ridiculous as thinking she could get away with killing him, as ridiculous as thinking she'd been in the right at all.

Sakura doesn't want to be stupid around Sasuke-kun again. He makes her the sort of stupid that diminishes her.

She cracks a knuckle behind her back, resists snapping a finger to bring her back to herself.

Sasuke twitches a little when the bamboo pot slams into his chest, Naruto glowers. "You gonna let us in or what?"

"Sorry," Sakura says abruptly. Sasuke's eyes turn on her again, the strange mismatched iris turns her stomach. "I need to get back to work," it isn't a lie, but it is an excuse. Sakura says it simply, a stoic withdrawal. She doesn't like being around Sasuke-kun, it's unnerving, unsettling her footing just when she thinks she's found it. It isn't _fair._

Naruto frowns down at her, that same soft concern and confusion. If Sakura knew Sasuke half as much as Naruto had, maybe she'd have been a better teammate. However, Sakura is tired of shouldering that guilt. She isn't _blameless_ but neither is Sasuke-kun. She isn't sure if she's _supposed_ to love him the way she used to, or if she's supposed to forge a new love. Jittery and fumbling for purchase, for footholds that aren't there.

Sakura wants to love him the way Naruto does, thoughtless, involuntary, always knowing exactly what Sasuke needs. But Sakura is not Naruto, and she is not Sasuke. She can only be the third man.

Sakura is a kunoichi. She is a professional. Sasuke doesn't need her and thinking she needs him is only a useless habit. It must be outgrown. Habit that must be demolished. He has been gone too long and she has fed on smoke, on empty delusions that she could have a part in his saving. Naruto saved Sasuke-kun.

That's okay. She saved Naruto after a fashion. The least she could manage. His heart, the slick dead blood between her fingers, his life slippery and red. And a future golden, golden. Naruto's future. Her calling.

Sakura has a village to rebuild. A heart to unjumble. A hospital ward. A battering post with her name on it.

Sakura doesn't smile. Her smiles always give her away. "See you."

* * *

—


	2. Chapter 2

**entitled:** there was an echo far and faint.  
 **fandom:** naruto, narusaku.  
 **setting:** after the war sakura tries to navigate sasuke being back and the complicated shift of team dynamics, and also naruto. _always_ naruto.  
 **warnings:** this is firmly a narusaku fic FYI and it's gonna get worse with these two before it gets better. there's gonna be a lot of angst. it's generally a coming of age sakura fic. the romance is hopefully real and also painful.  
 **disclaimer:** i own nothing that isn't already mine  
 **notes:** so i'm back after ages. people who've enjoyed this fic and taken the extra step to let me know, i appreciate that. i like having my own headcannons and writing for my own pleasure, but it's still really nice knowing that that resonates with people. comments really feed the soul of the writer and i know sometimes people can be a little shy to let you know when they enjoyed your work, but i promise it's no imposition to be informed that someone gives a shit about what you write. it is a little disheartening to receive silence! i want there to be a narusaku fic revival! so support ur writers and let them know you like what we do! who knows, maybe they'll update fics more often or pick up discontinued ones! literally a review could make the biggest difference between getting a writer hyped enough to write more, and them just falling back and writing not at all. so let the writers know you care, and what you feel! i don't wanna be writing to the walls! don't feel shy and let me know anything, thank you very much! also if some of you were recced this story or someone led you to this story, don't be shy and let me know! i like knowing how you guys end up finding your way to my work! so things are heating up in this fic, ino said narusaku rights! and let's see how that turns out.

* * *

—

* * *

There are still things Sakura is learning.

She is sixteen going on seventeen, arm deep in her best friend's rib cage.

She pumps her palm, open, close. The least she can do for Naruto is keep him _alive_. Suck air into her mouth and push it into him, down his throat, he should be dead already.

His lips are chapped, his heart is a slippery thing. Sakura holds on to the point where she almost cuts her nails into it, and knows she will die before she lets go. She wants him to wake up, laugh sheepishly at her, gasp, blush, scream, even tell her that she's a _liar_ – she wants – she wants – Sakura wants the blood back in his cheeks, the blue of his eyes, wants him to breathe back. To feel his ribs shutter up, to feel his lungs fill, to see his hands move from where they lie slack at his sides.

She sees him with red gates thrown, with a sky at his back, and all he stands to achieve. Naruto is not going to die.

More than anything, she loved Naruto. It was nothing to register, nothing to state awake, it was just there – during the war, knowing that should the situation deem it and she had to choose Sasuke or him, had to save one of them. She'd know it, sheltered between the space of consecutive heartbeats, that it'd been in her all along, she'd choose Naruto. There was no ifs, or buts. She would try of course, to divide herself between the two, but if she had to at the risk of his safety? She wouldn't. Naruto could die with Sasuke (like hell she'd let him), but Sasuke was not allowed to live if his life was bought with Naruto's death.

It wasn't love then, it had nothing to do with the word. Love has no place in war. She doesn't love Naruto.

She'll die before she lets go.

 _She doesn't love Naruto._

Love has no place in war.

* * *

—

* * *

There are still things Sakura is learning. She is sixteen going on seventeen and Ino's eyes spark behind her clipboard like a courtesan coquettishly behind her fan.

It is a look Sakura doesn't understand but knows enough to fear, it spells trouble the way violently red lipstick does.

Kankurou looks peculiar without his war paint, like a civilian boy. Brown hair, brown eyes, he has the sort of grin that would make him the charmer of any village. He'd dropped by to greet her he said, one of Naruto's special people. When he thanks her, Sakura is pleased to have been useful, she takes pride in her work.

His grin warms. It is a cicada summer and he's _harmless_. "You're kind of amazing, Sakura."

She smiles, a little taken aback but pleased. "I'm just doing my duty."

"I haven't shown you my new puppet yet?" His grin sharpens. It is a cicada summer and he's a puppeteer with a knack for poison and _far_ from harmless. He ducks to look at her, a little closer but not quite inappropriate. Yet. "I'd like to see if you could take the both of us on."

"Hell yeah, I can." Sakura says, sure and without obnoxiousness. "I'd like to study the string technique too."

Kankurou blinks, he regains his composure quickly. "Firsthand?

"Is there any other way?" She smirks.

He kicks back from the hospital wall and skews a grin her way, "I'm looking forward to it."

He leaves, Ino snorts.

Sakura's smile drops, distrustful. "..What?"

"You _like_ it." Ino's come over from her break at T&I to discuss some notes on brain hemorrhage and genjutsu, with a haggard Sakura on a stealthy lunchbreak. It's Ino who'd brought Kankurou along, since the Kazekage's brother was in the neighbourhood on some kind of secret delivery business for Gaara. She wonders if Naruto knows. Saves the information so she can have a reason to seek him out.

Even if he does, it's an excuse to see him. She feels like he's avoiding her somehow.

Ino waves the clipboard away so she can show Sakura a grin full of pearly teeth, "You _like_ being flirted with."

Sakura's first instinct is to call Ino a _pig_ , it's like breathing now, this easy squabbling between them. But she pauses, opens her mouth, shuts it.

During the war, she'd gotten a love letter. She'd politely declined it as best as she could, hadn't let it pierce her veil of professionality and smiled at the ninja. She didn't know if he'd survived the war. At the time, she'd internally recoiled from it, it had embarrassed her so thoroughly - being wanted at all. Maybe she'd put a block on herself, between her head and her heart. Kankurou wasn't flirting with her, she could crow.

Ino wrote the book of social intricacies and other mating rituals, literally, it was part of the assignment she had to perfect to be certified as a torture and interrogation specialist. Sakura's protests would be unconvincing and incorrect. If Ino says he was flirting with her, _then he was flirting with her._

Sakura, looks like shit. She hasn't been sleeping (busy, busy, busy) and she sucks at cooking - so lunch consists of the saddest little onigiri in the world (courtesy of Sakura's shit cooking skills aging badly in her sadly empty fridge) and (Sakura would have kissed her) some tempura Ino brought over from a little shop across T&I. It's a little soggy from the bag, but Sakura's too hungry to complain. Sakura looks like shit, her hairs a mess (all her scrunchies have gone missing, and she's got a black string elastic that she is _sure_ is causing major breakage to prop up the frizziest saddest top-bun in hell), she's blunt sometimes when she should be subtle - and a little too subtle when she should be blunt - _Sakura looks like shit_ , there's a bloodstain on the sleeve of her labcoat, another less pleasant stain on the hem, she looks like shit, and she feels like shit, and _apparently_ a boy has just left the premises, witness to all of this, having _flirted_ with her.

There was that mental block again, that had made her not want to see it. The only one who'd ever flirted with her that she'd known instantly, was Naruto. It was ages ago, when he'd been highly annoying. It turned into habit, it turned into comfort. When he came back from training with Jiraiya, she'd even missed it, had smiled in familiarity the rare moments it happened. She still hadn't seen Naruto since they'd visited Sasuke, that she thought of that at all, felt excruciatingly too soon. _Too soon._

Maybe she did like being flirted with. She felt her face heat a little, then she turned away hoping Ino would think it was bad temper rather than dizzying unease with it. She hadn't known she was being flirted with because she hadn't wanted to know.

She'd only known with Naruto.

* * *

—

* * *

One of the rules was love Sasuke. Love Sasuke.

Love Sasuke, love Sasuke, she couldn't even tell who she trusted less with Sasuke; Sasuke or herself.

Make Team Seven whole, they'd gotten him back and everything that came after...she wanted it to be in control, she wished it was easy, but she couldn't stand to be alone in the same room with Sasuke and didn't expect an opportunity to do so to ever come around in any way that wasn't forced as hell. There's be snowstorms in Suna before _Sasuke_ ever sought her out. He didn't need her and when she lay in bed at night, exhausted to her bones and yet, mind still jostling about and keeping her stress-insomnia fresh, she wondered if _Naruto_ would need her. She'd played support in these efforts to get Sasuke back, and in Samurai country she'd also temporarily abandoned the cause. If she hated herself for that she'd never have peace. She tried not to think about it. Naruto didn't need her.

With Sasuke back, it was like...the goal she'd been working towards with Naruto ceased to exist. She hadn't seen him in _ages_

Seemed like everyone got to see Naruto except her, she was always just missing him, he was always stepping out just before she arrived, or coming in after she left. Sai said he'd sparred with Naruto that afternoon, Kakashi said Naruto was going over old treatise in the library, the librarian said Naruto had stepped out with Shikamaru, Shikamaru said Naruto'd been playing chess with him all afternoon. Sakura didn't even _ask_ about him, she didn't have to, it seemed everyone she talked to had had some of his time. Everyone except her.

It _stung._ Sakura was a terrible liar, right? She couldn't ask, because she was afraid someone would see and know and she'd be so, damn, _stupid._

She was always a little too early or far too late, right?

She was supposed to love Sasuke, she couldn't even face him - she wanted to see Naruto, but she couldn't even explain.

Maybe Naruto didn't want to see her.

And maybe she was supposed to...

What?

What was she supposed to _do?_

* * *

—

* * *

Summer fights in like it's got a whole lot of shit to prove, choking up the air with sun-light. Sakura lies on her back in the wispy and miserly shade of the great old tree on training grounds 54, sodden through with sweat and feeling it just as quickly evaporate in the scorch. Ino isn't far, dragging her slicked pony tail from her nape and flipping it away so half of it smacks into Sakura's open gob.

They are ragged, exhausted on the floor.

Sakura wheezes through strands of ivory blonde hair. "You should get a stylish bob."

"Please, everything I do is stylish."

"I should give one to you right now," Sakura suggests and doesn't have time to even gesture towards her weapon's pouch before Ino harrumphs and pulls her hair back behind her again. "You changed your shampoo."

"Wanted something new."

"It's nice."

"Hm."

"Watermelon?"

Ino doesn't answer. Sakura's pulse is beating in her ears, the spar should have exhilarated her, but the blood is churning sea-like in her head. She drags her forearm over her eyes and sighs, trying to slow.

This…sucks.

She's been busy, her workload hasn't slowed, she's running around between the tower, hospital and Ino – when she does get back home, she's too wired to sleep – and by the time sleep comes, the daylight's already chewing her raw. Sakura greets mornings drained and frazzled, she's exhausted but entirely incapable of rest.

She's been running herself ragged. Tsunade made a comment about it, her apprentice had not appreciated the knowing silence that followed it. An ellipsis that leads. _You can relax a little, you know…_

Sakura had known. But the less busy, the more time she has to think – and the more time she has to think, the more everything _sucks_. She is sixteen going on seventeen and the last time she saw Naruto he was walking Sasuke to Ichiraku ramen – he hadn't even noticed her. She'd felt her stomach drop to her feet. She could have gone, greeted them, joined them, _something._ But something had stopped her, hard as a hammer stops a nail. She couldn't have stood knowing if she was welcome or not, she couldn't have stood figuring out she was an interruption; it'd have confirmed too many things.

She's been spending a lot of time with Ino, trying to keep her friend steady – Ino's one of the most resilient people Sakura has ever met, she's tried to draw on that for herself before, tried to aspire to it. But Ino's lost her father in the war, and that resilience comes forward with such pronounced strength that Sakura can tell some of it is part pretend, part fake-it-till-you-make-it. Ino just hasn't made it yet.

Sakura's tried talking to her about her dad, but Ino hadn't wanted to, silencing the attempt with a. "There's nothing you can say to help me cope that my training hasn't already equipped me for." Ino had said with a certain coolness beneath the dismissal, like she didn't particularly care if Sakura agreed or not.

Ino was trained to cause grief, give it, construct it – she could take it.

Sakura had backed off. But Ino still needed distractions, someone to be there for her. Maybe one day Ino would talk, maybe she never would, maybe she'd have faked her way into finally being okay. Sakura's figured that being around, being present, seeing Ino a lot more…is something she can do as a friend.

So they didn't talk about death. They sparred, they compared notes, they trained together, ate together – when they did talk it was about things that meant utterly nothing, pleasant chatter about cosmetics and perfume, the kind of girl-talk that Sakura feels very out-of-practise with, it's hard to get back into it. She isn't like Ino who can flawlessly blend her feminity into the deadly arts, Sakura's work is heavy-lifting grunt-y and kind of unflattering, she's always been a little too sweaty and slightly shrill, her need to be worthy vibrating off of her skin in a way that's hard to ignore and sometimes embarrassing.

Sometimes, Sakura hates it the most, Ino tells her gossip. About this promotion or that, about who's seeing who, who's fucking who, who wants to…

This is important. Ino needs distractions, and if Sakura was a little less of a liar she'd admit that she needs them to. That being there for Ino helps Sakura not think about other things.

Until it doesn't.

"What about Naruto?"

Sakura blinks against her forearm. She thinks she's misheard. It takes a while to remember what Ino had been nattering on about while Sakura was falling in and out of exhausted inattention. Ino had been asking her about Kankurou, Sakura had been grunting here and there.

The Kazekage's brother had had to return speedily back to Suna and Sakura's schedule had been swamped completely ( _Oh, is that so Forehead? You could have made time_ ) and they'd agreed to meet up next time he was in the village, or she was in his. Sakura had felt relieved, and slightly awful about it. _You like being flirted with you like being flirted with you like being flirted with –_ SHUT up. But mostly relieved.

So if Forehead didn't consider Kankurou as an option, who counted? Kiba? Sakura had snorted. Shinooooo? Sakura had said nothing.

 _What about Naruto?_

And she's a fool to listen to any of it. To lift away her arm and blink bewildered at the blinding blue sky, to wear her shock so openly. She's not expecting it.

 _Naruto hasn't spoken to me in two weeks. I've seen him walking with Sasuke, I've seen him step out of the Hyuuga compound with Hinata – I was going to knock on his door and ask how he was doing but I lost my nerve._

 _Whenever I see him, I feel my heart beating in my face. I feel stupid, and lost, and that's the last thing Naruto's supposed to make me feel._

Sakura swallows hard at nothing. She can feel her friend's gaze, light on her sweaty cheekbones. Seeing everything, knowing more. If Sakura pretends, she'll just be embarrassing herself.

Her face feels hot, her heart's beating in her face. A cocktail of hopelessness and excruciating shame slurring in her stomach like an unlit Molotov that never had a chance.

It's the wrong time to let Ino know that Sakura has complicated feelings about a boy.

Ino needs distractions.

Ino's big on projects.

Ino's look is far too soft and understanding, but underneath that there's the unmistakable edge of Yamanaka grit – the will to make things happen, even if they shouldn't, couldn't, never, _not even in a million years._

Sakura has certain rules when it comes to Naruto.

Breaking them, breaks her.

And she can't.

She _can't._

* * *

—


End file.
